Samsung's foldable phone 'shatters like dried paper'
This morning a variety of sources revealed information on the 2019 Samsung Galaxy phone with a foldable display. This device is said to join the Samsung Galaxy S10 in an onslaught of feature-heavy smartphones that'll take on Apple's "X" line of iPhone devices. The Samsung Galaxy phone with codename "Winner" will be the most unique, coming with two displays – one on the outside for small tasks, one on the inside that'll fold right down its middle.
What good is a fold-friendly display in a smartphone? You might not be able to fathom its worth until you've got one in your hands. Surely it'd be better to just have three displays, one on the outside, two on the inside, a hinge between the two? Apparently not – since Samsung did that already in China and South Korea with devices that've done OK, but certainly not well enough to consider a worldwide launch.
We, as smartphone-toting society, seem to be over the whole "flip phone" phase we were in just before 2007. But we might've come back around. Xiaomi just released a sliding-backed smartphone, after all. It's like LG's Chocolate phone, but much, much larger.
Today Bloomberg revealed a number of details on the Samsung Galaxy folding display-toting phone. Below you'll see all the details in list form. All of these details come from anonymous sources, and we have no reason to suspect any of them are less than on-the-level.
• Prototype was 200 grams
• Bigger screens than any other phone on the market
• Non-glossy display glass (not standard glass covering)
• Opens with a snap, like the original Razr but smoother
• Samsung working with Google on OS UI
• Concept images coming to SDC 2018
• UI images coming to SDC 2018
• Hinge passed internal folding tests, 200,000 times, the standard threshold for Samsung for durability
• If cracked, the main screen "shatters like dried paper"
The way Bloomberg described the display's shatter potential, you'd think there's no way the folding bit would work. If you take a peek at Samsung's previous demonstrations of folding displays, your mind might well be put at ease. They've been working on this tech for years.
Bloomberg suggested that Samsung was still deciding between two different versions of the Galaxy foldable display phone. They suggested that both devices "open from side and side," which we can assume means they open like a book. They said that the two versions Samsung's deciding between open longer horizontally or vertically – so they're like a wide book or a skinny book.
It's like the phones will open up to be a pamphlet or a children's book. Or like a vertically-oriented tablet or a horizontally-oriented tablet. It should be pretty obvious at this point that we won't get a final product by the end of 2018 – but we may well see what they've got in the works at SDC 2018.
Word today says the Samsung Developer Conference 2018 will play host to a number of images of both the hardware and the software for this folding-screen smartphone. You can safely assume we'll see SOMETHING on November 7th and/or 8th, 2018. We'll be showing you everything we see there right up close and personal as possible – stick around!